Gaming and HD video slow decline of desktop PC sales

The decline in sales of conventional desktop PCs is being slowed by an emerging trend for buying the bigger computers for gaming and video management applications.

The trend has been helped by the attractive price differentials between new desktop PCs, and other computer form factors such as laptops and netbooks, with US consumers spending, on average, 4 per cent less than laptop buyers ($811 for their most recent desktop, $842 for their most recent laptop, on average), according to a report from analyst Forrester Research, ‘The US Consumer PC Market in 2015’.

Desktop sales are being buoyed by processing-heavy applications, primarily video game playing, and editing and viewing HD and 3D video and graphics, as the market grows for devices that capture HD and 3D videos and still images. However, despite this fillip, desktop PC sales will continue to fall in real terms over the next five years, from 32 per cent of PC unit sales in 2010, to 18 per cent by 2015.

“The ‘death of desktops’ claim is wildly overstated,” says the report’s author, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. “Seventy-two per cent of US consumers still use desktops, especially in a study or living room – in a multi-PC household, not every computer needs to be portable, and the all-in-one desktop offers consumers a space-efficient option. And desktops still offer more processing power-per-price.”